I have two SSDs in my DAW, One for Operating system and software and the other for live
projects.(I would get a third one if I used a lot of samples)I use standard drives
in external enclosures (USB3) to transfer work in progress onto at the end of each work
session so the DAW is always clear for new jobs.

I would say its a no-brainer for your OS and if noise is not a concern you can use
cheap standard drives for storage (you can always upgrade these at a later date) I would
suggest a second SSD as a scratch drive to keep the OS drive pure. This way you can
regularly clean the scratch drive and your system is always ready to go when the moment
grabs you.

Quote Imran500:Thanks for the
reply - is there any inherent advantage for music applications over standard HDs though,
the amount of noise generated is not a major factor for me or boot up times.

Hi Imran500!

The sustained
transfer rate of a solid state drive could easily be double that of a recent 7200rpm hard
drive.

However, whether or not this would benefit music applications depends on
how many audio tracks or simultaneous sample voices you want to run. Basically if a
7200rpm hard drive is fast enough to run your projects then buying a solid state drive
won't give you direct benefits

You could easily run what you have listed using standard drives
without any noticeable impact on system load/speed but an SSD could speed up sample
loading times if you often use Garritan for big sampled orchestras and that kind of
thing.

I think you are correct to address the CPU and RAM first as it will have
the most impact on what you are doing, especially if your 25 tracks are all using VST
effects etc.

Yes, I'm thinking of adding an SSD simply to store my larger sample libraries on so that
projects start up faster - a heavily loaded project can take 10 mins to load from spinning
disks, so this would be a significant boost if loading from an SSD.

It used to
be the case that SSDs weren't particularly reliable if repeatedly written to, but I think
that nowadays that limitation has been overcome, so there should be no downside to using
them wherever budget permits!

Quote Billum:Yes, I'm thinking
of adding an SSD simply to store my larger sample libraries on so that projects start up
faster - a heavily loaded project can take 10 mins to load from spinning disks, so this
would be a significant boost if loading from an SSD.

It used to be the case
that SSDs weren't particularly reliable if repeatedly written to, but I think that
nowadays that limitation has been overcome, so there should be no downside to using them
wherever budget permits!

SSDs are just great. I keep my sample libraries on them and the pain of loading projects
and browsing massive sample banks / nebula presets is just gone forever. I would never go
back.

Actually loading samples is a factor come to think of it, Alchemy, GPO and no doubt
Omnisphere with it's 40GB of samples would all benefit. The relatively small size of these
drives is an issue though, Omnisphere itself would take a significant chunk out of a 240GB
drive.

Any recommendations for these drives, PC Specialist are offering an
Intel 520 series, and would there be any point in getting one for the main audio drive
which is going to be for vocals, bass guitars?

A good value drive if used predominately to host sample libraries and not for recording is
the Samsung 840.Samsung have a cashback deal on so you can get the 250GB drive for
as little as £110 and the 500GB for ~£220. See Dabs, Scan, Amazon etc.Note that
the 840 Pro is about 40% more expensive with similar read speeds but a better drive for
writing.

The vanilla 840 uses TLC NAND which has one third of the endurance of
the MLC NAND used in most consumer SSDs. Enterprise drives usually use SLC NAND which
offers the best endurance but at a much higher price.The 250GB 840 is rated for
around 15GB of writes per day for 15 years so it’s still fine for DAW usage depending on
your working methods.

My dedicated
internal drive ( WD4000AAKS drive SATA - 400G) which I used for all my DAW projects,
finally gave up and failed over the weekend. I cannot retrieve the data from it.

So after 4 years of running DAW projects continuously it gave up- it must have been lots
of thrashing of data on the same disk area for all those 70+ audio tracks, playing back
add infinitum. After a project completed I deleted all the disk data and started again
with a new project.

I have three internal drives;C drive,this
failed project drive and a third dedicated library disk. ( also used as additional
backups for my projects, copied over from this dedicated project drive)

So I am thinking of the next best solution/options to replace this dedicate DAW project
drive.So it looks like non movable devices like SSD is the way to go, given the
usage they may get.Also you should be able to transfer to my next new PC, if and
when I get one.

I looked at the average size of my DAW projects, and these were
about 4G.

So in theory any replacement SSD drive say 10G would be more than
sufficient for such a dedicatedDAW project drive.( only using 16 bit audio files).
Getting a larger SSD, I could double up as my C drive may also be an option, ( 40G in
mine). But, this may require a full Windows XP rebuild for me, which I would rather not
do.

Q- Are SSD's just a simple plug and play to replace my WD SATA
drive?Are there any BIOS changes required? Any particular SSD spec to look for?As mentioned, I'm using Windows XP

>Q- Are SSD's just a simple plug and play to replace my WD SATA drive?

Pretty much.

>Are there any BIOS changes required?

Not usually,
no.

>Any particular SSD spec to look for?

For use as an audio
drive, get one that has fast write times, eg. around 500, with a similar read speed.

>my C drive may also be an option, ( 40G in mine). But, this may require a full
Windows XP rebuild for me, which I would rather not do.

Some SSDs come with
software which they claim will transfer your OS from your hard drive to the SSD, although
I've never used this software. But ideally your system drive will be a physically separate
drive from your audio drive.

>So it looks like non movable devices like SSD
is the way to go, given the usage they may get.

Bear in mind that SSDs only
have a finite lifespan when it comes to writing. They don't last forever, and should be
replaced every few years just like hard drives.

>Also you should be able to
transfer to my next new PC, if and when I get one.

XP doesn’t support TRIM so you want to use a drive with decent
garbage collection. Look at sites like Anandtech for info on this although they probably
don’t mention it much these days with XP being so old.

If you clone a HDD to
an SSD there can be issues with misalignment which will impact performance so make sure
your cloning software can handle proper alignment.

Quote Butters:Would you know if
XP gets any indication on the health of a SSD, before it just crashes? I assume it may
accumulate some type of error logging with it's writeable space getting less?

There are ways to measure the fitness of an
SSD and it varies by manufacturer and SMART can also be used. Since you are using XP I’d
recommend looking into this more than normal.

How much data will you be writing
per day on average?If you have a rough idea of this figure it will help to determine
if it’s an issue or not.Even a 250GB Samsung 840 which uses the least durable of
NAND chips types that SSDs use (TLC) is rated for 10GB of writes per day for 23.4 years
and that is a conservative figure.A 120GB model of the same drive will be rated for
half that amount.